A Dagger of the Mind
by Deplaisance de la Nuit
Summary: In the wake of Dagon's fall, Vienne, Champion of Cyrodiil, must face the purpose lost from her life, and the darkest parts of her own soul.


Vienne knew she had to get to Savlian Matius before the Black Horse Courier did. At least that was what she said to herself, it was the excuse she made to the multitudes in the Capitol City asking for answers she didn't have, or words she couldn't utter, that she might leave them and be at peace. Someday soon, she would have to answer for the sake of posterity. Perhaps then, she would be up to the task.

Savlian... one Hero of Kvatch to another...

But the Wawnet Inn beckoned.

Her limbs were weary beyond imagining, now that it was all done with. She had not slept since before

(they marched in array down from the Great Chapel of Talos, down the path to the fields before Bruma with a great exulting throng to either side, and though she knew good men would be lost this day, she felt a burden removed from her heart – the staging of the battle would have sounded like madness, madness derived from the Xarxes itself, but that she saw Martin was _himself _again, he was more himself than ever)

(_Hail Martin Septim! Three cheers for the Emperor! Martin! Martin! Martin!_)

and after that, Paradise awaited, and the Dragonfires, and even if there were a moment to lose, she couldn't have slept if she tried. But in trying circumstance, sleeping was never a matter of trying...

She couldn't remember having booked a room but she must have, here she was at the door...

You just kept going...

Until you dropped.

There must have been some sleep. If there were dreams, they were eclipsed in the flash of warrior's instinct that woke her.

The soft breath of cold wind through an opened window.

"You sleep rather soundly for a murderer," said the man in her room in a soft voice. "That's good. You'll need a clear conscience for what I'm about to propose."

Vienne was already at her feet, katana

_(Dagon's Bane, _she'd told Delmar at the Chironasium, _no sense waiting for the name to bear out_)

unsheathed. "Explain yourself. Now."

"In due time, dear child. In due time. First, an introduction. I am Lucien Lachance, Speaker for the Dark Brotherhood. And you, you are a cold-blooded killer, capable of taking life without mercy or remorse. The Night Mother has been watching, and she is most pleased. And so, here I am. I come to you with an offering. An opportunity... to join our rather unique family."

What was the man talking about? What could he be speaking of? She strained to think, to remember...

"So, I have your rapt attention," said Lachance silkily. "Splendid. Now listen closely. On the Green Road to the north of Bravil lies the Inn of Ill Omen. There you will find a man named Rufio. Kill him, and your initiation into the Dark Brotherhood will be complete."

This initiation had already begun, then. This Night Mother... what could she have seen that...?

"Do this, and the next time you sleep in a location I deem secure, I will reveal myself once more, bearing the love of your new family."

"You're wrong..." No. She realized now. "Yes. There was a guard. From Bruma. He got between my sword and one of the daedroth – just before the Great Gate opened – I paid the blood-price, not that it... I never knew his name. Captain Burd will never forgive me. But that's not..."

(_But the Amulet, we have the Amulet- _words of pure raving desperation, and yet-)

"That's not why you've come for me, is it?" she whispered. But as her mind grew distant and cold and far from this room, she felt the hilt of a dagger pressed into the palm of her left hand.

"A token of the Dark Brotherhood. It is a virgin blade, and it thirsts for blood. Now, I bid you farewell. I do hope we'll meet again soon."

"We may," said Vienne, the winter's wind blasting sharply through the breached window. "But it will not be as family."

"You may yet reconsider," said Lachance, with perfect assurance. He made for the door, and Vienne fell to her knees as he passed, not particularly caring now if this cutthroat might see an opening.

Martin, Martin... his blood...

But no. That wasn't murder, either. Dagon walked the Imperial City. If her words hadn't put an end to him, then

(_the mighty shall tremble at my feet and pray for pardon, _Mankar Camoran had declaimed, and she'd stood in the shadows shouting silently that if all he desired came to pass, even then, her lord Martin would never beg Dagon's pardon, Captain Matius would never even tremble, and she realized then that she was trembling herself and jerked out of it, she rushed into the whole mass of the red-robed bastards, but too late, too late, Camoran and the Amulet vanished from her very grasp)

And hadn't she deliberately dragged her feet on the road to Sancre Tor, and Miscarcand too, in the hopes that something, anything would arise that presented an alternative to the Xarxes ritual? The books on the table, the sleepless obsession in his eyes, the candle-flame in his voice flickering, guttering – she was sure his very soul was tottering, that if he bound himself to that book, Dagon would claim him. And she had been wrong. And she'd spent weeks of precious time – he might have had a _crown _by now-

(_I cannot stay to rebuild Tamriel, _and if only he'd said it one hair plainer, or one moment sooner, if only she'd...)

Divines. She would have _stopped _him.

Had she thought herself incapable of murder? It would take many a century in the Dark Brotherhood before she equaled the will to murder she had known as she saw her Emperor die.

(He would have died for the others in the chapel if help never came, and from that moment Vienne had known, Emperor or no, here was a man she would follow unto death, but she had meant her own death, she had meant her own)

She had meant the death of the world, in the end. A murderer. Yes. But if this Night Mother had thought her without remorse...

Gods' blood. Did Vienne really suppose this Lachance fellow to be incapable of _dishonesty?_ No. He had known her state to be a vulnerable one, if he had been anywhere near the City, and of course he had. He had moved to exploit it – what a coup he must think it, to recruit the Champion of Cyrodiil herself!

(_Let's just give thanks that we're alive!_ for Ocato could scarcely wait a moment to contain his joy, could he, oh, he had conceded the right of rule to Martin, he had realized his own self-interest by then, but he had gotten his wish all the same, in the end, the Empire remained his)

Rufio. She had no notion who the man was, and recoiled from the idea of his murder, and the murders that would come after. But if the Dark Brotherhood had wished _Ocato_ dead-

What was Vienne aiming for, crawling through her own soul, looking for rotted things? Was she doing Lachance's persuasion for him?

No more of that. She opened the trunk at the foot of her bed and-

She could not will her hand to relinquish the dagger.

What of her pack? She slid it in, scabbard and all, and now let go of the handle without effort. _You'll be back for me,_ the blade seemed to whisper even as she buried it from her sight. But she would forget eventually. Give it time. Give it time.

It was then, standing and seeing, that she saw a shimmer upon the air.

Lachance was still in this room. Watching, waiting. Was he to dog her all her days, until she succumbed simply to quiet the thoughts of it?

With a scream of denial, she raised up Dagon's Bane and ran the shimmering form through. Lucien Lachance fell, a frozen corpse by the bedside.

Now she was a murderer in deed. She had done murder, done it to keep herself from all the murders to follow, but she had no doubt Camoran had once thought along lines like that. Vienne fled Wawnet Inn, bile scraping at her throat.

* * *

The next weeks were marked by one relinquishment after another. The position of Arch-Mage, she had given to Raminus Polus, who had some sort of capability to head a guild that spanned the province. The battered Kvatch cuirass, sewn and rewelded in dozens of places by now, was displayed in the Great Chapel of Akatosh. She had renounced her position as a Blade – an act that Baurus, Grandmaster since Jauffre's death at Bruma, found strangely beyond his comprehension – and let Dagon's Bane reside with the swords of the dead.

None of it changed the fact that she had the vast part of her life ahead of her, centuries wherein the prospect of a quiet life was made impossible, by both her reputation and her own taste for adventure.

She needed adventure, but she needed something simple. Perhaps such a thing even existed. Whatever became of dear Sir Mazoga in Leyawiin, for instance? Was she still hunting down those bandits with the black bows?

With winter setting in in earnest, the south reach of Cyrodiil was impossibly alluring. In fact it had the best climate year-round, though people tended to laugh and call that proof that Vienne _was _a Dunmer after all, and not just a Colovian with strangely ashy skin. She had not been down that way since Caro and Terentius, and the ghost of Grantham Blakely...

And there was one adventure she'd fled from, for fear of what might befall the world if she began. Yes. The blue light that pierced the Bay when all about was inky night. The three heads that were one. If it drove her mad as it had the others, perhaps madness would not be so bad...

How much easier it was to fall prey to temptation when no tempter but herself. No, the mad who had come out that door in Niben Bay were more tormented than she ever could be. And if she fared better, then it would be in obeisance to the voice that reverberated in her skull like a kettle-drum in a cathedral, to play champion to the daedric prince that had made them mad.

_This, _to succeed her service to Martin.

How desperate she must be for a purpose, how lost she must be in the pursuit of it, to have considered it for a moment.

Inevitably, in the end, she found her tread drawn back to the lodestone. The City, and the Temple of the One.

* * *

"My friend!" said a sibilant voice behind her. "It is good to see you again."

Vienne tore her gaze away from the stone foot of the dragon and turned to see an Argonian in rough black robes. It took her a moment to register, but those blue markings across his cheekbones... he was the one from Lake Arrius. The first she had truly managed to save from Dagon's power.

She rushed to embrace him. "And to see you! I never knew what became of you. But now you come to pay your respects. Thank you. Thank you – if there were anyone who had the inclination to discount his part, it'd be you, and..."

Released, he chuckled somewhat abashedly. "This temple is my home, Champion. I have done service to Arkay here for many years. But as such, rest assured I can hardly forget the Last Septim!"

"I don't... imagine." Vienne half-laughed, half-sobbed with a relief she couldn't define. "I'm afraid... I never did catch your name... in all that confusion..."

"Jeelius. And neither can I forget that you risked your life to save me, a stranger. If there is anything within my power..."

"This is your home," said Vienne through another hiccup. "Your temple. If you might... record what happened... for prosperity. So that I don't have to spend my life recounting it."

Jeelius nodded gravely and stood stock-still, as though to receive and memorize at once. She began, and somehow, in spite of her grief and guilt, in spite of those hiccups that any true-trained Arch-Mage would know the remedy for, the hesitation vanished.

And she knew, soon enough, her purpose.

She didn't trust herself to linger in Kvatch without the adulation getting to her head. But she had not yet given over control of the Fighters' Guild. She would tell Oreyn any effort to rebuild Kvatch would be defended by the Guild out of her own purse. And there were many corners of the map besides that. If she took stake in one fort, one city, and when that stood with pride, moved to the next...

_I cannot stay to rebuild Tamriel. That task falls to others._

She would fulfill his last request.

_Author's Note: So, naturally, having written a chapter for Martin in Tenacity of Lathenil, my writer's drive immediately takes a sharp veer because I haven't done the post-game angstfic yet. Here you are - back to business, now._

_The Lucien Lachance encounter did, in fact, happen at this time and in this manner during my first playthrough. Game mechanics be hanged, I wanted to send to Elsweyr for all the perfume they had._


End file.
